


I Stare into the Fire

by PuppiesRainbowsSadism



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, M/M, Pyromania, Pyromania AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1431223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuppiesRainbowsSadism/pseuds/PuppiesRainbowsSadism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If he ever had thoughts of impurity, he pushed them aside because fire was cleansing, so he had to be pure. He liked to pretend his birthmarks were where the flames licked too close, his moles where the skin was charred, impurities burned off. Dad and Dean never talked about the fire; Sam didn’t know any better."</p><p>In which Sam is a righteous pyromaniac/arsonist/murderer and Cas is the purest soul he's ever met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Stare into the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Arti Chopra's "Fiery Love," which starts "I stare into the fire / it signifies my desire"
> 
> Pyromania AU suggested by booksandwings @ tumblr
> 
> Warning: This is pretty dark. Like, joyful murder dark.

                Sam didn’t remember the fire, but he liked to pretend he did. He imagined the heat searing his skin and making him sweat. If he ever had thoughts of impurity as a child, he pushed them aside because fire was cleansing, so he had to be pure. He liked to pretend his birthmarks were where the flames licked too close, his moles where the skin had charred, impurities burned off. Dad and Dean never talked about the fire; Sam didn’t know any better.

                He grew up. He fought with his dad a lot, got in trouble, never seemed to do anything right. _Just that time in your life_ , Dean explained casually. _Everyone’s awkward in their teens_. But Sam wasn’t so sure. He thought maybe the fire when he was a baby wasn’t enough. Somewhere along the line, he became corrupted, flawed. Impure. He bought a lighter when he was sixteen, put flames to his skin until he smelled like burning. It was never enough. Dad thought Sam was doing pot. Dean knew from experience that wasn’t true but couldn’t say so. Sam got yelled at some more.

                The second fire was an accident. Something about electricity and bare wires and Sam wasn’t really listening because he was in awe as he watched the life he had made for himself – the normal life with a major and a girlfriend, the life where he could convince himself he was happy – go up in flames. Literally. He wasn’t hurt, not in the least. Dean had made sure that Sam didn’t suffer a single lick. His brother thought he was mourning his girlfriend. He was mourning the missed chance. That was twice in one lifetime that he had failed to purify himself, and who was so unlucky if not cursed?

                Or maybe, he thought as his brother drove them down yet another endless road, maybe he wasn’t cursed. Maybe he was blessed. For most people, fire was evil, destructive. But Sam knew better; he knew that the destruction of something unclean creates something beautiful and pure. He could help them. He could purify them.

                So he left. That night, with no explanation, while his brother dozed fitfully, Sam left with nothing but a matchbook and the clothes on his back. He didn’t care if Dean looked for him. Hell, let him. Dean wasn’t ready to be cleansed yet anyway. He didn’t understand. Maybe he would be by the time he found Sam.

                He wandered aimlessly. Well, not totally aimlessly. He kept to cities. Small towns were too personal, too close, the people too nosy and observant. No, he kept to cities, where he wouldn’t stand out and no one would think twice about a burning building. His first burn was the house of a Sunday school teacher who allegedly touched little children – boys, girls, he wasn’t picky. Go big or go home, Sam figured. Why waste time on the petty thieves and jaywalkers? He lit a cigarette and felt the smoke burning him from the inside before he tossed it into the grass, watching it blaze even as he walked away, not returning until the house was unsalvageable, a crowd gathering in the street. It felt nice. More than nice – it was the best Sam had ever felt, like he was doing some good in the world. He couldn’t cleanse himself with fire, but he could by cleansing others. He felt it in his soul.

                It went on like that. He kept to cities and suburbs and skimmed the papers: Rapists and muggers gone free, animal abusers, top-notch criminals like that. He visited them in the still hours just before dawn. Sometimes they were home, sometimes not, and the times they weren’t were extremely unsatisfying. It felt like failure if the unclean weren’t at least tickled by the flames. He aimed to injure.

                The first time he intentionally _killed_ was in Illinois, a huge family in an extremely old, _wooden_ farmhouse. Several generations in the same abode, a hierarchy of sorts that left the youngest and most open-minded bruised and bloodied. Sam saw one of them beaten within an inch of his life before he took action. He sneaked the victims out of the house in the dead of night, encouraging them to run, just run, as far as you can, to the police if you can get there, just _run_. And they did, all of them, except the one tied to the radiator, burn marks from the metal singeing his skin and old scars from a rusty red-hot fire poker not even beginning to fade yet. Sam made a special note of the huge red welts on his back where it looked like new skin had to be grafted on in places. The boy – young man, rather; he looked about Sam’s age – was unconscious when Sam dragged him from the house, blocked the doors, set the fire, and ran. Where to, he had no idea. The poor guy looked half-dead, and it wasn’t as if Sam could take him to the hospital. How would he explain any of this?

                Sam took him to a motel, didn’t have much of a choice. Sam fixed him up as well as he could and waited for him to wake up, pacing the room, trying to think of an excuse, occasionally brushing over the smooth shiny skin of his burns, comparing them to his own. This young man was _clean_ , and Sam was as in awe as he was when Jess burned. He didn’t dare touch the scars on his back. Starting at the upper spine and flaring out, they looked almost like wings.

                _Oh God_ , Sam thought, his breath shaky, entire frame trembling, _This one is **pure**_.

                There was no doubt about it. When the young man’s eyes opened, Sam was almost surprised not to see red and orange dancing in the irises. They were blue, startlingly so. The hottest fire Sam had ever managed (a coalminer who beat and killed his wife) burned blue at the centre. Sam had trouble breathing when the young man looked straight at him. Blue flames. Purity personified.

                The first words he said to Sam were “You killed my family.”

                Sam couldn’t lie, not to him. “Not all of them,” he answered. “Only the guilty ones.”

                “I saw you burn it all,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard Sam.

                “I cleansed them.”

                The young man blinked at Sam for a moment. Not in fear, but in wonder. “You cleansed them,” he repeated. “But not me. Why didn’t you cleanse me?”

                Sam gasped, offended by the very thought. “You’re already clean. The only one I’ve ever met who is.” The young man looked confused by this, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he sat up in his bed so he didn’t have to look up at Sam. Sam felt bold and asked, “What is your name?”

                “Casper,” the young man answered with more than a hint of distaste. “But I’m called Cas.”

                “Cas.” The name tasted clean on Sam’s tongue, cleaner than the purest water. _Casper_ , on the other hand . . .

                “Do you cleanse a lot of people?” Cas asked softly, the same wonder Sam felt reflected in Cas’s eyes.

                Sam nodded. “It’s my job. To purify evil with fire, so I can be clean too.”

                “Why don’t you just set yourself on fire?”

                “Why don’t sailors just drown sirens?” he retaliated with a small frown. “It doesn’t work.”

                Cas hummed thoughtfully but otherwise remained silent. Sam considered him quietly until he spoke again.

“May I come with you?” Cas asked hesitantly, afraid of rejection. “I want to cleanse evil too.”

                It seemed like the obvious solution, and Sam was more than happy to agree; he was ecstatic.

                But, “If you come with me, you’ll need a new name,” Sam explained. “’Casper’ isn’t who you are anymore.”

                “I need a name that burns,” Cas agreed. “But I don’t know – “

                “I do.” Sam raised his hands to Cas’s shoulders, hovering inches above the burned skin. The wings. “May I?”

                “No.”

                Firm. Immediate. Sam moved his hands away. “What do you know about the angel Castiel?”

                Nothing. Cas knew nothing about the angel Castiel, but that was fine. He took to the new identity as if it were made especially for him, ages ago when the mere idea of angels was first forged. The man Castiel was a genius, although he was timid at first, a mere observer. He noticed how Sam lit up from the inside at a successful burning and how he deflated at a failure. It was then that Castiel got other ideas. There was more than one way to skin a cat, after all. He stuffed a chimney flue with lint and coals drenched in gasoline, made it look like an accident, ignorance on the woman’s part. Castiel read books on cars for days, and Sam had no idea why until he sabotaged the wiring on an elderly man’s car and Sam got to watch it catch fire and blow. Castiel could make it look like an accident with expertise. He didn’t stand out from a crowd, and his naturally peaceful and timid aura put people immediately at ease. He played the curious student well, the aspiring author better, innocent best. Sam was _in awe_.

                And in turn, Castiel looked up to Sam, his mentor, so desperate to please the man who brought him out of a life of pain and terror and stuck him on a pedestal of purity. Part of what he did was to make the world a better place; most of it was for Sam.

                The first time they accidentally killed someone, it was together, walking along the street, hands intertwined – not romantically, but as a symbol; two people against the world, crusaders together – and they were jumped in a back alley. It wasn’t a problem. Sam was strong and Cas agile. They put a blade in each side of the man in tandem, watched him die while they wiped his blood off their hands. But this felt wrong. This was not a clean death. So Cas hotwired a car, and they drove to the middle of nowhere. Sam gathered wood while Cas wrapped the body so no pieces fell astray. It was hot: They rolled up their sleeves and burned the body.

It was hotter: They lost their shirts.

Sam put one arm around Castiel’s shoulders, and Cas hissed, a shiver wracking his body. A shiver undoubtedly of pleasure. Sam was confused until he saw his own arm resting against Castiel’s scars and realised, drew his hand away quickly.

                Cas glanced over with a bitten lip.

                Sam looked back with a trembling heart.

                They came together inevitably, naturally, like a dance, and made a fire of a different kind – between them, around them, the sound of crackling wood their soundtrack, the smell of smoke the sweetest aphrodisiac. Their fire burned and burned until it shot white hot against their skin, and for the first time in his life, Sam felt truly pure.


End file.
